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5.23.2007

Bored? Or just in a sugar-induced coma from all the Snickers bars she was eating during the breaks...?

I spent the day at the French Chamber of Commerce, where I took a long test in the attempt to get an extra diploma in Business. Middlebury offers this business class to us and it's kind of like a buy-one-for-$35,000, get-one-for-60-euros deal. Except that it's not sure you'll get it. And after this afternoon, it became even less sure.

We've been preparing for the oral part of the exam for the past couple of months; this afternoon, we had to give an 8-minute presentation on a topic of our choice. Because I am somewhat business-challenged, I stayed away from topics that had lots of numbers in them and decided to talk about the draw of advertisements in the metro. Interesting, non?

So I am finally called into the room, where an overweight older blond woman is waiting to listen to my 8-minutes of brilliance. And just as I reach the end of the introduction, I see her eyes rolling back in her head.

My first thought is that she's having a stroke.

My second thought is that she's on drugs.

My third thought is that perhaps she has a lazy eye and I shouldn't say anything because that would be very rude.

My fourth and final thought is that she is FREAKING SLEEPING. Her head is kind of bobbing around and her eyes are flickering, open one second, closed for the next six, and here I am, only in my first part, realizing that the person responsible for my grade is SLEEPING THROUGH MY PRESENTATION.

So I speak louder and faster, trying to wake her up with my energy and my interesting ideas. I put more emphasis on words, but as I'm still a little unclear about the stroke theory, I feel a little self-conscious about potentially yelling at a woman having a medical breakdown. The sleeping theory was finally proven when I finished and she was supposed to ask me questions for 5 minutes. Instead, she talked about how ugly the metro is and how ads really brighten it up.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that she heard about 2% of my presentation, none of which focused on the metro's ugliness or the brightness of ads. I'm not taking it so personally though; apparently she slept through the previous guy's talk as well. Freakin' French professors, man.